


we go out like birthday candles

by metonymy



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Death, Divergent Timelines, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kitty is always learning. And when she's reliving moments again and again she learns more - about herself, about her new power, and about the true cost of the war she's fighting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we go out like birthday candles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trojie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/gifts).



> Happy Secret Mutantmas, Trojie! I hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> This story is set in the dark future timeline; it references elements from the "25 Moments" supplementary media, but knowledge of that is not necessary to understand the fic.

The first time Kitty changes the past she nearly dies. 

She is trapped in a laboratory at one of the mutant detainment camps, shivering and scared and clinging onto a determination to live no matter what these fuckers try to do to her. They've got one of those collars on her, blocking her powers, keeping her locked inside herself when she should be able to pass through the collar and the walls and the barbed wire fences as easy as breathing. But she tries, again and again, battering at the tiny circle that keeps her solid, straining till all the muscles in her neck and shoulders are sore and aching.

She tries every time they strap her into one of those chairs, scavenged from a dentist's office or something, and stick a needle into her skin and into a vein. It makes her stomach turn to see the way her skin indents under the pressure before the point slips through, the plunger depressing to pour chemicals into her system or pulling up to suction out more of her blood. Why? She's never sure. It's not like they tell the test subjects anything, they just wait to see whether they're going to react or die. Maybe they're trying to duplicate her power. Maybe they're trying to figure out how to remove the X-gene from anybody with one, or stop it from ever existing. It doesn't matter. What matters is that she can't stop it. She tries every time to move away, to summon her power even with the collar, to kick and scream and stop them, but every time she fails and watches the clock while she counts the seconds until the ordeal is over. Until it starts again.

She never remembers the first time it happens properly, somehow. What she knows is that they drug her, some formula that's supposed to block her powers temporarily. It's also supposed to sedate her, but she feels wide awake. And she lies in the chair and thinks that she can't let this happen again. 

The orderly removes her collar, waits a moment, then unstraps her arm to remove the IV. 

_This is her chance. She pulls the orderly close with a burst of desperate strength, thinking she'll phase through him when he's off balance, but he's too fast and draws his taser. Kitty reaches for it but he's too fast, he shocks her and she shakes, every nerve crackling and firing at random. And as her body spasms Kitty closes her eyes and flings herself away as hard as she can, and she can feel something starting to separate like when she started to phase for the first time, and -_

Everything stops. Her body is still, her heart rate is normal. Nothing hurts. It's like she was never shocked. Her collar is back on. She doesn't remember it happening. The taser is still in the orderly's holster.

The clock on the wall reads the exact same, as if nothing ever happened.

Did anything happen?

The orderly removes her collar and Kitty would swear she's having double vision, maybe it's part of the drug, but when he goes to remove the strap on her arm she knows exactly what to do.

She yanks on the orderly's arm with a power born of terror and snatches the taser out of his holster as he falls towards her, phasing out of the straps and through the chair with the taser in his hand. She fires the taser and he falls onto the chair, then the floor. There's a spare lab coat hanging on the back of the door and she takes it and grabs the ring of keys off the orderly's belt. Just for good measure she tases him again and gives a swift kick to the back of his neck before opening the door - she can't phase here, they'll see it - and walking out.

Later - when she's made it out of the camp, avoided the alarms and the guards, phased through the cold core of a Sentinel to destroy the electronic brain that powered it with teeth gritted - Kitty holes up in an empty house that's waiting to be sold and stares at her hands. She's never done that before - whatever it was that gave her that second chance. Phasing? Phasing into herself, into… her own past? Not for the first time she wishes for the Professor, for his wisdom and his knowledge and his ability to ask just the right question. But she's alone now. She has to figure it out for herself. 

Besides, she isn't sure if it will work when she's not being electrocuted, and even though she still has the taser Kitty isn't about to test it on herself when she's completely alone. Fucking up this second chance would be an utter waste.

But she keeps that knowledge tucked away when she leaves the next day, when she travels to get further away from the camp and into the nearest city, camouflaging herself with the people surrounding her, avoiding the places where a Sentinel might be stationed. She knows she's lucky, blending in like this instead of trying to hide blue skin or horns or wings - she tries not to think of the friends she has who were taken first - she keeps her head down and keeps looking for the signs of the resistance.

Because if there's one thing she knows, from her grandfather's stories and the lessons she's learned, it's this: there will always be a resistance. They will always fight.

 

The second time Kitty changes the past it's barely different at all. 

She meets Clarice in Seattle, rain drumming on the roof of the empty warehouse where this band of mutants has been camping out along. "But you can call me Blink," she says with a smile, her eyes a glowing green in the dim afternoon.

"I'm going to try really hard not to make any terrible jokes, but I can't make any promises," Kitty says, and Blink's smile goes from sharp to genuinely amused. They chat easily as they catch up on what's going on, what groups are where, who's making moves and who's planning, who's been captured. Who's been killed. That part's less easy.

It's only later, when everyone else is asleep, that Kitty talks about what happened in the camp. She's the only one Blink has heard of who's managed to escape and stay alive so far, at least without anybody helping break her out. So Kitty explains. About the lack of food and the casual brutality of the guards. About the presence of the Sentinels and the swift destruction of anyone who would stand against them. She can feel her throat tightening and her eyes stinging, but she keeps talking, ignoring the tears that threaten to fall. She tells Blink about the experiments. And she tells her about that last day and that strange new manifestation of her powers.

"Have you tried it since then?" Blink asks. 

Kitty shakes her head. "I was alone. It wasn't safe. Besides, what if I have to be electrocuted to make it work?"

A smile flickers over Blink's mouth, gone too quickly to see if it's mocking or friendly. "Why not try now? We'll keep you safe." 

Kitty looks past her, to the wide-open space and the dim light onto the pallets where the others are curled up, then back at Blink and her green, green eyes. 

"All right."

And she closes her eyes and tries to pull away, not phasing, the other way, like trying to force a joint to bend in the opposite direction, _and the rain beats down on the roof and then suddenly stops, and a smile flickers over Blink's mouth, gone too quickly to see if it's mocking or friendly, and she says "Why not try now?"_ and Kitty can see her speaking _and the silence and it's the same thing, it's all happening at once._

But the strain is too much; Kitty exhales and lets go and the two moments collapse into one, resolving back into her sitting on the cold hard floor.

"Did it work?" Blink asks.

Kitty shakes her head and then has to sit very still for a moment as her head spins. "Not really. I couldn't hold it." Maybe with practice, with training, but that would require time she doesn't have. 

"Why not try it on me?" Blink asks. "You know you can use your other power on people - maybe you can use this one, too." 

So they try a few ways - holding hands, which makes Kitty want to giggle; her shoulders; then finally resting her fingertips on Blink's temples, taking a breath to settle herself. 

"Are you ready?"

"Yes," Blink says. And it's a little bit easier this time to stretch in that new uncertain way, her own eyes slipping shut as she concentrates and tries to push Blink away without pushing her the same way she phases what she's holding instead of phasing through it, thinking about that afternoon when she arrived - and Blink gasps a little and Kitty opens her eyes, her hands falling into her lap.

"What?" she asks. "We just sat down." 

Blink raises her eyebrows as she rubs at her temple. "Check your pocket."

And Kitty reaches in and she finds a bracelet _that Blink had given her when she first came in asking her to hold onto it for later_ , but as she thinks about it she can also remember not getting the bracelet, just meeting and talking and finally sitting down here, and she shivers. 

"So it worked." 

Blink smiles at her, even though her forehead is still tight with tension. "It did. Would you like to try it again?"

They practice a couple more times after that, little changes that don't affect much. Drawing pictures in the grime on the windows, that sort of thing. Then they have to stop because it's clearly hurting Blink more than she's letting on and Kitty is feeling exhausted and this new power is still unfamiliar and hard to use. But Kitty doesn't sleep for a long time even after she lies down. She thinks about all those moments when one small change, one person knowing what was coming, might have made the biggest difference. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail, she thinks, and pulls her thin blanket a little tighter around herself. 

 

The third time Kitty changes the past is actually more like the four hundred and sixty-seventh time she changes the past, but that's irrelevant.

She's been practicing with Blink and James and the others, experimenting with how far she can send them back, how long she can hold it, trying to keep track of what happens between the phasing and when they come back. But that's been secondary and snatched in odd moments between their primary work: finding and saving other mutants. 

The group has been planning a large-scale attempt to break into one of the camps and free as many mutants as they can and get everyone to safety. But there are so few of them on this side of the fences, and they have to get their timing right and use everyone's powers carefully if they want everyone to survive. Having Kitty's phasing makes several parts of the plan easier, but it's still going to be a challenge. 

It's a moonless night when they head out, driving out as far as they can and leapfrogging through Blink's portals to get even closer, an electrokinetic mutant disrupting the fences and the surveillance cameras, Kitty phasing the locks off and sneaking into the facility to kill the alarms. The eerie purple glow of the portals reflects off the hastily constructed walls as the others usher the captive mutants out while Kitty makes her way around and back to the rest of the team, everybody watching over their shoulders and listening, everybody holding their breath.

And then, inevitably, there's the sound of tree branches creaking and breaking under the weight of enormous artificial limbs. The Sentinels move more quietly than they should be able to but they're still big enough that they make some noise. Half the team scatters to take the freed captives to safety, running through the woods and crashing through the underbrush; the other half stands their ground and prepares to fight.

Kitty stays. She's spent too much time running. And it's almost a joy to fight again, to feel her muscles straining as she runs and jumps and rolls, dodging her comrades' blasts and projectiles and what feels like an icy cold wind that reminds her of someone she doesn't have time to think about, phasing through them and seeing the Sentinels stumble and fall. But they keep getting back up. They keep attacking, and Kitty can hear her fellow fighters screaming.

She lands badly and goes down, rolling over and scrambling, trying to get her feet under her as a Sentinel approaches her and opens the front of its head where a face should be _and there is a bright light and fire and searing pain and every part of her hurts_ and then it's glowing in the middle of its chest and Kitty barely has time to shield her face before it explodes. 

Her skin is still tingling as she hears the awful screeching noise of another Sentinel exploding, and then there's silence apart from everyone's ragged breathing and the crackle of the sputtering electronics of the Sentinels. 

Kitty lowers her arms, debris falling from her sleeves, and looks up at an absolute mountain of a man carrying the biggest gun she's ever seen in her life. 

"Kitty," says the stranger, and it looks like he smiles for an instant that's too short to be sure of. "You look different without the scars." He leans down to offer her a hand, a few dreadlocks falling over his shoulder. 

"Who are you?" she asks, accepting the help and trying not to wobble when she's standing up again. She knows she shouldn't trust him this fast. But he did just blow up two Sentinels and save them all. And he hasn't turned the gun on her or Blink or anyone else. Behind the stranger she can see Warpath helping another mutant stand, one still wearing the jumpsuit of the camp who clearly stayed behind to help.

"Bishop." The stranger lets go of her hand, slinging his enormous gun around to rest under the improbable cape he's wearing. "You sent me here." And Kitty can still almost feel the burning, the fire of the Sentinel's attack scorching her skin, the attack that never happened and that she survived, the feel of something strangely cold replacing the flame to stop her from burning alive. She must have survived it, if she'd been able to find Bishop at some point and send him back to stop it from happening. 

"Isn't that a paradox?" she asks. This time Bishop does smile, a broad flash that transforms his face. "We should get out of here."

He nods and turns to start walking, following the path the other group made, and then the guy in the jumpsuit comes barreling over and Kitty is caught up in a hug by Bobby Drake, and for a moment she's so thankful for her new power she can hardly breathe. 

 

Kitty stops keeping track after a while. Bishop talks to her about her powers, telling her things that the future version of Kitty he met who sent him back had told him to teach her now. More paradoxes. But she supposes she's grateful for the lessons he can tell her rather than having to learn them all through trial and error, how she learned to control her chrono-phasing and how she discovered its limits and its goals, the strain and the toll it takes on the traveler to have their psyche flung across time while their body struggles to hold on, how the timeline resets and nobody knows beside the time traveler. 

Except that last part's not quite true. But she doesn't tell anyone. How could she explain it? It would sound crazy to tell them she's seeing and remembering events that will never happen. Even given the high bar for things that sound crazy in their lives. 

But it keeps happening. The memories - the glimpses of the other timelines, the other events - slip in and out of focus. It seems like the bigger changes are the ones that leak through more, though it's not a hard and fast rule. Maybe it's because those are the ones that have a greater impact on her psyche. Maybe it's just because that's how the human mind remembers events. It gets worse as they keep going, as she starts to use the chrono-phasing more, as she starts deliberately using the power to alter events rather than just toying with tiny shifts that don't make a difference. Kitty is changing the past every few days, resetting events so many times that if she doesn't focus on what's right in front of her they start to bleed together. She gets distracted mid-sentence because she's already said the words before, because she can be looking at Bobby and hearing him say two different things and she can't tell which one is the one she's living in right now. 

And she can't let on about this or have everyone start thinking she's crazy. Especially since they start looking to her more for advice and instructions and orders, as she falls into the role of leader, because she's the one who knows how to save them. She doesn't want to think about being their savior or their leader or their champion or failing them and letting them all down. Instead she thinks about the advice the Professor used to give to other telepaths about focusing and shielding their minds and tries to practice it. She tries to meditate and quiet her mind so that she doesn't hear the other timelines' screams. She concentrates on not flinching out of the blue because in some other lifetime she's watching the Sentinels break down another wall and start killing her friends.

She has seen them all die so many times.

The worst part of it all, though, is that the deaths start to blend together. Maybe it's because of the way she ruthlessly shoves those false memories, those ghost moments, those never-happeneds down and doesn't let them take up too much space in her day. There's no time to dwell on things that haven't happened, that aren't real anymore. But they keep trickling in, invading her waking thoughts and her unguarded dreams, blurring in her mind into one long agonizing scream. Clarice stabbed, shot, blasted, torn apart, shoved through her own portals and dismembered. Roberto and his flames snuffed out, burning up inside a Sentinel's fist. Bishop glowing as the kinetic energy is fed right back into him and overloading his system, shining through every pore in his skin till he shatters. Piotr crumpled like a tin can, caught off guard and sliced in half when he was still tender flesh and bone, thrown off a tower to fall forever as the timeline collapsed. And Bobby - throwing himself in front of her a hundred times, dying a hundred different ways, choking on her name and the faith in his eyes that still burns bright. The faith that she would save them all.

If they don't remember dying, does that still count as saving their lives?

And then there are the ones who are truly gone. The ones who she couldn't save, no matter who she sent back or when she sent them to. Hank, set upon by a mob, too many for a single time-phased person to save him even if they teleported in or flew down. Kurt, trapped by his own powers, nobody able to get to him in time to keep the air from running out. Warren and Jubilee and Sam and so many others who disappeared into the camps and never came out. 

Sometimes Kitty thinks - if she could send someone back far enough, if she could find the turning point where everything started to go wrong, could she change it? Could she hold them twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago? Or is it just a fatal flaw in the design of the universe, a mutation in the fabric of reality that has warped and twisted the world until it's nothing but darkness and death?

But she doesn't linger on these thoughts for long. She doesn't think about the deaths of her friends or the plans of her enemies. All she can do is keep sending them back, keep trying to fix it all, keep trying to avert disaster for one more day. All she can do is hope that this time her power and her strength will be enough.


End file.
